How Dangerous Is Alcohol to Your Health?

Regular drinking of excessive amounts of alcoholic beverages can be dangerous to one’s health. Learn how excessive alcohol intake affects different parts of your body.

Regular drinking of excessive amounts of alcoholic beverages can be dangerous to one’s health. Too much alcohol in your body can result in liver disease, heart disease, hypertension, stomach ulcers, pancreatitis, infertility, depression and anxiety, cancers of the breast and gullet, stroke, dementia and even brain damage.

Alcohol Risks
How alcohol affects your body

Alcohol or ethyl alcohol is an intoxicating substance that can be metabolized and absorbed immediately by the body much faster that most other nutrients. The walls of an empty stomach can quickly absorb alcohol and alcohol can reach the brain in just one minute.

Alcohol is also quickly absorbed by the small intestines which then travels to the liver through the veins of the digestive tract and affects almost every liver cell. The liver metabolizes nearly one half ounce of ethanol per hour and this is why alcohol impacts more on the liver. A person that drinks more than one bottle of alcoholic beverage in an hour allows the arrival of more alcohol in the liver than the enzymes can process.

Reduces the Fat Burning Ability of the Body

Alcohol also makes you fat. It’s not only the calories in alcoholic beverages that makes you gain weight but alcohol lessens the amount of fat our body burns for energy. Our system has the tendency to discharge alcohol in our body as quickly as it can because alcohol can’t be stored in the body. This body action is a priority but sets aside other important body functions like absorbing nutrients and burning fat.

Damages the Cardiovascular System

Long term intake of alcohol as well as drinking too much in one night can cause serious damage to the heart. Alcohol can cause problems in the heart such as cardiomyopath or the stretching and drooping of the heart muscles, an irregular heartbeat usually referred as arrhythmia, high blood pressure and stroke. However, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol can prevent healthy people from developing coronary heart disease.

Damages the Liver

Heavy drinking can also result in serious liver damage. Alcoholic hepatitis, fatty liver, cirrhosis and fibrosis are mainly due to heavy alcohol intake. Heavy drinking can also make the pancreas to release toxic substances which leads to pancreatitis where blood vessels in the pancreases are subjected to a deadly inflammation as well as swelling which results to improper digestion.

Lowers Immunity

Our immune system is also affected when we drink too much alcohol. Weakening of the immune system due to heavy intake of alcohol makes our body less resistant to many diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia. Drinking too much in one occasion instantly reduces or capability to fight infection. This continues even a day after an individual got drunk.

Causes Cancer

Some other cancers that can be developed when frequently consuming large amounts of alcohol are cancer of the throat, cancer of the liver, mouth cancer, and cancer of the esophagus.

So the next time you want to consume alcohol, think again. As always, do everything in moderation, especially drinking alcohol.

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